About RaceDayCT

After 18 years and 9 months working as a sports reporter at the Hartford Courant, Shawn Courchesne left the newspaper to begin the website RaceDayCT.com in May of 2012.

On August 18, 1995 Shawn attended his first short track racing event, filling in on coverage for a Friday night show at Stafford Motor Speedway for the Hartford Courant newspaper. Little did he realize that night was the first of many to come spent in the pits covering all forms of motorsports.

From 1997 to May 2012 Shawn was the lead reporter covering motorsports for the Hartford Courant. During that time he brought everything from coverage of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and Sports Car Racing to Drag Racing and Motocross to the pages of The Courant.

Shawn’s emphasis was long on covering the three NASCAR sanctioned short tracks in Connecticut. In 2007 Shawn began producing an auto racing blog, The Backstretch, for the Courant. It quickly became the most trafficked site in the Courant’s deep and varied blog lineup, and remained that way for years.

Shawn was the Hartford Courant’s UConn football beat writer from 2005 through the summer of 2008, when he was named as The Courant’s first sports web reporter. Shawn was also a regular contributor to the UConn football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball blogs at The Courant and served as the sports department’s only online video producer.

Shawn began working at The Courant in 1993 as a high school clerk while still in college. Over the years Shawn garnered numerous awards for his writing for the The Courant and The Backstretch, along the way covering everything from Major League Baseball, the National Football League and world championship boxing to professional bull riding, water skiing and high school sports of all sorts.

In March 2008 Shawn was recognized by the organizers of Speedway Illustrated’s annual SpeedwayExpo for providing the top racing coverage in New England. For his work covering the death of Whelen Modified Tour driver John Blewett III in August 2007 Shawn was recognized as a finalist in the annual Associated Press Sports Editor’s national awards judging. Shawn was also recognized that year by the APSE as a national finalist for a feature on the rocky relationship between former UConn football player Greg Lloyd Jr. and his father, former NFL great, Greg Lloyd Sr.

Shawn is a Massachusetts native who has called the Nutmeg State home since 1989.

If you’re interested in finding out more about what advertising with RaceDayCT can offer you, contact Shawn at: RaceDayCTAds@gmail.com or view the RaceDayCT Marketing Summary.